


Vertigo

by sxetia



Category: Blame! (Manga)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, One-Shot, Protection, Saving Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:00:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24577954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxetia/pseuds/sxetia
Summary: One false step and it's all over.
Relationships: Killy and Cibo
Kudos: 16





	Vertigo

Echoes through the abyss, sounds carried up through the vacuum of the City's infinite expanse. Wails from miles below bounced off tracts of fragmented steel only to be muted and dampened by clumps of malformed concrete, sounds suffocated and stories drawn to an end. Each time that Cibo heard one she couldn't help but peer over the edge as if her meager eyesight would let her discern the source some ten, twenty, fifty floors beneath the two of them.

Killy would probably be able to see down there, but there wouldn't be a point in asking him – the most she'd get would be a blank stare, or a grunt of acknowledgement without followup if she was lucky.

"Here," he spoke, a rarity in and of itself. When Cibo let her eyes drift from the endless chasm they stood next to, he was gripping onto a set of metal rungs stapled to concrete in an errant, uneven fashion. Some sort of rudimentary attempt at a ladder, or just a happy accident on the part of the Builders. Cibo glanced up to try and trace where exactly it would lead (if it lead anywhere at all), and by the time she looked back down Killy was already ascending. His equipment clanked and bounced against his jumpsuit with every movement, the gravity gun stuffed into a holster at his hip. Cibo couldn't remember ever seeing it not in Killy's hand.

While Killy went up, Cibo looked down: fear was a concept that had long been erased from her mind, one of many emotions she had simply forgotten how to feel in the centuries she'd spent rotting in place, but even then she felt a certain apprehension at the concept of falling. All that progress lost. She gave it a fifty-fifty as to whether she would live or die upon making impact, assuming that there was a floor at the bottom to hit at all. She'd probably impale herself on a piece of debris before she found where it all began.

But if there was no end, how could there be a beginning...?

The chasm seemed closer, closer, though she stayed still. Her fixative, wandering mind caught the best of her balance, and she found herself swaying forward as she stared into the expanse. She'd jinxed it – contemplated falling so much that her body decided it for the best! Cold shock bubbled in Cibo's gut and began to waft through her body, long strands of white falling behind her as she began to descend. She felt no fear, merely a cold acceptance of the situation. The only thing that she thought in those seconds to truly mourn was the time she had spent with Killy. It was the first time in so long that she had had a companion, and now she had damned herself to another eternity of ennui... Killy wasn't the sentimental sort and she doubted that he would mourn her, much less give chase.

Oh, well. It was nice to know him, wasn't it...?

Cibo fell. 

Without a way to tell just how far she descended she counted seconds, twenty-seven of them, and then her steel spine denting as it made a crater in concrete. The firmware that her body ran on couldn't handle the stress, and so her vision began to flicker in and out of function. Lines of code and mangled information appeared before her consciousness, but she was helpless to decipher any of it. Every inch of her circuitry was on full alarm. The overwhelming onslaught of information overloaded her, and her consciousness was out in an instant. Nothing but black, much like the cold interior of the City.

Was this death? It was a luxury she had never known. She felt a subdued glee at the notion of gathering more information and having a new experience.

* * *

When she awoke, her vision did not return first. Sensation, the feeling of fingers pricking around and reconnecting wires, or tearing out pieces of metal and concrete that had been embedded in her body. The hands in her stomach plugged something in and her eyes suddenly worked again, the dark innards of the City obscured by the red text strings in her peripheral vision. She reached out to touch the text, to grab it, but only felt pale, clammy skin and greasy hair. 

When Cibo's eyes focused, she saw Killy's face staring down at her, scowl and all. She would have thought he was annoyed that she was touching him, but... Killy wasn't like that. Not as far as she could tell. Cibo's jaw dropped slightly, and she released a useless breath.

"You came back," she whispered in utter disbelief.

Killy didn't respond. He stuffed the wires back into her stomach and turned to walk away – up the same path they had trekked up ten days prior.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this because i was frustrated that most of the blame! fic on ao3 are aus of other fandoms.


End file.
